


Samurai Blues

by psiten



Series: And The Angels Had Guitars Even Before They Had Wings [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, Best Friends, Gen, M/M, Madara Sings the Blues, Music, One-Sided Attraction, Pining for Mr. Oblivious, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psiten/pseuds/psiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Madara wants is some respect, some quiet, his guitar, and for his best friend to get the hell out of his life.  He really means that last one.  Really.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Hashirama ought to come with a warning label that said, 'Don't try this at home.  It doesn't work for real people.'  Anyone else who pulled that kind of shit probably would've gotten dumped by the side of the road.  But not Hashirama.  Oh no.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Samurai Blues

     Locking the door on his one-room flat, Madara pulled his pitcher of water over to the table and started tuning his guitar. This little hole in the ground wasn't much to look at, and it didn't have much in it besides his instrument, his paper, and a change of clothes, but he'd be damned if he took another penny from the great Uchiha family or played the tired prettiness they called music. He'd find the sound burning through his fingertips out here in the real world, and he'd starve before he went back for their help.

     The strings sounded under his fingers like an old friend. He jammed out a warm-up, listening for a riff that caught his ear and made him want to give it a song. All the music he needed was right there in his guitar, bent and hammered till it cut like a knife.

     The door he'd locked clicked once, then flew open, a long haired man rushing in. A man who should've still been living in his next-door mansion up on Privilege Hill.

     "Madara! Come quick! I got to show you--"

     "What the fuck, Hashirama! Did you pick my lock?!"

     The asshole shrugged the same way he did when they were kids, and he used to climb up a tree into Madara's bedroom window. That look never meant anything but trouble.

     Jiggling the handle, he said, "I heard you playing. I figured you wouldn't notice if I knocked. So about this thing--"

     "How about you leave me alone when I'm trying to write a song!" Madara yelled. "How did you find me, anyway? I didn't tell anyone where I was going!"

     Another shrug. "I went to that bar you like so much, and before I could finish telling the bartender, 'I'm looking for a guy,' he told me which apartment you'd gone to. And then the old guy outside pointed me here."

     Fucking Hashirama. You'd think the universe'd get tired of cutting him all the breaks.

     His _former_ best friend pulled out his chair and handed him his coat. "So like I said, there's this thing I've got to show you. I snuck into your old room and grabbed your passport--"

     " _What?!_ " He grabbed his guitar to his chest before Hashirama could take it. "I'm not going anywhere that needs a passport! I told you, I'm writing! I want a new song for the gig next weekend, so leave me the fuck alone!"

     Pulling a sheaf of papers out of his jacket, Hashirama laughed off everything. "It's fine, Madara! I got a ticket for your guitar."

~//~

     Twelve hours later, in a land where the clocks were seven hours fast, Madara glanced around the airport covered in foreign words and glared at his friend. "What the hell, Hashirama. Do you even speak the language here?" Wherever 'here' was. Hashirama had rushed him onto the plane before he could read any signs, and all the hostesses spoke was foreign.

     The asshole dragged him towards a door. "Who needs to speak languages?! I speak _people_! Come on!"

     "Where are you taking me?"

     "To a street festival!" His friend waved his arms and made that excited face that Madara found simultaneously infuriating and endearing. Not that he'd admit that. "There's singing, and dancing, and costumes, and fried food on sticks!"

     Madara glared some more as they walked, cursing the fact that Hashirama was apparently able to read the crowd well enough to find the exit. From there, he hailed a cab off of the twilight streets and showed the driver a picture torn out of a magazine.

     Hashirama ought to come with a warning label that said, "Don't try this at home. It doesn't work for real people." Anyone else who pulled that kind of shit probably would've gotten dumped by the side of the road. But not Hashirama. Oh no. He got the cabbie to drop him off right outside a bustling square filled with as many lanterns as people. And Madara had no idea why this was happening.

     But the smell of fried dough and honey was making him remember that all he'd eaten today was toast, some peanuts, and an airline sandwich. No matter how good the airline food was, it was still airline food. Then he remembered he had no idea what the currency was here.

     Then he remembered he had no money at all.

     He was gonna be damned if Hashirama was paying for him for anything. Madara turned to find his friend up on a bench, hooting at some spinning lights up in the sky without a care in the world. "Oi," he said, yanking Hashirama's belt until he toppled down to the sidewalk. The bastard landed annoyingly on his feet. "You said you wanted to show me something. So where is it, what is it, and when can I go back home?"

     "This is it, Madara," Hashirama answered. The view past his spreading arms was singularly unimpressive at the moment, and Madara felt a growl rise in his throat as his friend caught him around the shoulders and whispered, "It's called fun."

     "Have I ever told you how much I hate you, and that you're an asshole?"

     He knew the pout was coming a second before he saw it. That god damned, teary-eyed pout that he kept promising himself he'd never fall for again, because he knew it was a put-on and Hashirama was just playing him, but he caved every damn time. And damn it, he was hungry. And they were already here, wherever here was.

     "All right," Madara sighed. "Fine, fine. You win. I'll give you one night! _One!_ " His friend jumped into a fistpump. "Now where's a bank or a telegraph station or something so I can maybe wire money out of my account and convert it to whatever's local?"

     Hashirama's face went blank. "Convert?"

     He dropped his face into his palm. "We're at a street festival with no local currency?"

     "Umm..."

     "And you have no idea how to find a bank, do you?"

     "Would a bank even be open this late?"

     As he shook his head, Madara glanced around and saw an old man across the plaza, playing a hand drum and singing as people threw coins into a hat. Now that might actually work. "Fuck this," he muttered. "We'll make the cash. You with me?"

     His friend watched for a second, face blank, but he perked up as soon as he saw Madara set up on a corner with his guitar. Hashirama tossed a fallen silver coin in the empty case to seed the pot and slipped a harmonica out of his pocket with a grin. The Senju prodigy could be one hell of an entitled punk some days, but damn if he didn't know how to wail. And if all they did tonight was play the blues on a streetcorner, Madara would gladly strum till his fingers bled. He didn't even feel time passing as strangers tossed money into the case at their feet.

~//~

     "Hey-ey..."

     The scents of food and people had faded into the quiet dark of night, the grass on the hill where they were watching stars smelling so much like grass at home but sharper and wilder somehow. Six bottles caught the moonlight next to a pile of food wrappers, Madara's guitar case, and Hashirama's new fretless, five-stringed toy he'd picked up at a music booth. Smoke from the sparklers stuck in Hashirama's headband burned Madara's eyes as his friend poked him in the cheek. Madara tried to wave his hand away, but missed by a mile.

     They both fell over laughing at nothing. Whatever had been in those bottles was a lot stronger than it tasted.

     "No, really though," his friend asked, rolling his head over to Madara's lap.

     "Back. Off. Your fucking head's on fire. Don't put it on my nuts."

     "But what's actually _blue_ about water? It's clear, in'it? So why's the oc... the osh... why's water turn blue sometimes?"

     He shoved Hashirama off onto the ground. "Because fuck you, that's why." He couldn't quite get up, but he kneed the asshole's stupid grin. "Here I was..."

     " _There_ you--"

     " _There I was_ , trying to live a life of... of _authentic hardship_..." He flopped over and dragged his guitar back where he could play it. "And you roll in, all, 'Hey, let's get on a plane and fly to Kubla Khan!'"

     "Xanadu. Kubla Khan was the dude."

     "Whatever! Fucking Coleridge." Madara walked his fingers up the fretboard, right to where the neck met the body of the guitar and pressed his thumb against the back. "D'you even get what 'authentic' means?"

     His friend snorted and rolled back over to look at the stars. " _Authentic._ Adjective. Genuine, true, or real." Hashirama poked Madara's knee. "Pretty sure you're real."

     "This'n't real. Nothing _you_ do's real." He pulled the sound of a pure, high C out of his guitar, plucking it over and over and shaking his head in time to the notes, then strummed an E minor chord. He hammered off the D-string, but the change wasn't quite the sound he was looking for. "Real is what people do. And you..." He glared at Hashirama, who was already half giggling. "You... are not people."

     The asshole rolled to his knees, scooting closer. "I'm not people?"

     Madara ignored the shit out of him, trying to work out how to make the sound in his head echo out of his guitar. It'd been out of reach all week, but he felt lucky tonight.

     "Ma-adara-a... If I'm not people, are you saying cannibals won't eat me?" Hashirama pushed Madara's head left and right, and Madara didn't stop him. Too much bother, not enough payoff. "Cause I think I'm people. Tasty, tasty people..." While Madara kept strumming, his friend started crooning along. " _People_... never eat shoes! That's why you got to, got to, got to bring the sandwiches, too..."

     And Madara fell right into his rhythm, hard as he tried not to, and somewhere in the music, he could feel the shape of the right chord pushing through his fingers.

     "People..." Hashirama belted out. " _People_... wear the shoes on their feet. Oh, they push the wheelbarrows fu-ha-hu-ha-hull...! Of sandwiches to eat."

     He slammed his fingers down from the E minor into a G minor 13, slicing out of the air like a rocket. That was fucking it. He had it. Even Hashirama stayed quiet while he listened to the notes whine and shiver, up till Madara strummed another chord to resolve the phrase.

     His friend whistled, falling over again as he applauded. "Madara. Seriously. What the fuck was that? That was _goose_."

     "Are you making up words now?"

     "I mean, it was raw! Where do you make up this shit? It was all, _Bam!_ And then _bam-bam!_ And.." On his feet all at once and steady as a breeze, Hashirama danced over to his new instrument that he'd never played before he picked it up two hours ago at the festival. You'd never know he was shitfaced from the way he handled the wood and the strings. Even with the sparklers raining orange crackles around his head, once he got an instrument in his hands -- any instrument -- he was like some kind of god. It wasn't fair. Then he moved his fingers on the board and he strummed, just like Madara knew he was going to.

     Exactly the same chords Madara had spent so much time and blood trying to find.

     " _Bam!_ "

     Bastard.

     Ten kinds of nameless envy and loathing welled up in Madara's throat. "That's sick. You don't know what that thing you're playing's called, and it's not even tuned in fifths."

     Hashirama wasn't listening. He was whining. "How does anybody not see you're the best, Madara?! Did you hear that? That was you! You should'a had the Conservatory composition prize _in the bag_!"

     "The Conservatory doesn't like pentatonic." And Hashirama, who could play any damn thing he touched, was nobody to be saying he, Madara, was the best.

     "Can I be your biggest fan?"

     "No."

     His friend pouted again, slumping over his instrument. "Top ten? Ple-ease? Do I need to be people? I can be people!"

     Madara shook his head at the opposite horizon, off where he couldn't see what faces Hashirama was making. And maybe Hashirama couldn't see him blushing. "People can't do what you just did."

     "But I just did what you just did! So you're just as much not people as I'm not people, and I know you're people, so that means I'm people!"

     "I am way too drunk to know what you said there."

     Hashirama flopped across Madara's lap again. "I love you, man."

     "Seriously. Fuck you. You're drunk, and your head's still on fire."

     When he didn't move, Madara rolled out from under him, taking his guitar and his case and strolling down to a bridge over whatever river ran through the heart of this city. Most of the festival lanterns were out, but the moon left streaks of silver on the edges of the wood, outlining the bridge in the darkness.

     "And now the water's dark," Hashirama said, leaning over the side.

     Madara pulled him back by the collar. "Everything's dark when there's no light, an' if you fall, I'm not saving you." He probably would, actually, but this asshole didn't need to know that.

     Said asshole stared through Madara like there was something stuck to his forehead, then pressed his finger against Madara's nose.

     "Oi."

     "You see stuff. I think that's why your songs are how you write 'em. I think that's it."

     "What did we say about hands, Hashirama?"

     "To myself!!" His friend pulled back, making sparkle fingers by his shoulders. "See? Still attached!" Up on his head, one of the real sparklers was smoked out. Must've rolled in the dirt.

     With a sigh, Madara slipped his matches out of his pocket. He struck one watching it flare for a moment between them, throwing a dark figure in the shape of Senju Hashirama onto the boards that gleamed for one moment in weak, golden light. It felt like all the mysteries of the universe were in that shadow, but really he saw just one thing. Everything was dark even when there was light as long as there was him.

     But he'd already known that.

     Spinning his friend around, Madara relit the burned out sparkler before the match got down to his fingers. "Why don't you and your hands figure out which of these buildings is a hotel. I want to finish this song somewhere with a lamp, and maybe get some fucking sleep."

     "Never fear, never fear! Man with hands is here!"

     Madara leaned against the back of Hashirama's head (the asshole wasn't moving), breathing in the smell of home one last time and neverminding the crackle of flashpowder on sticks above them. Then he muttered, "Okay. Let's go," and shoved his friend down the line.

~//~

     How he didn't have a hangover, Madara had no idea. He didn't question miracles.

     By the same logic, he wasn't going to throw out the chords he'd scrawled on the back of a firecracker wrapper until after he'd played the song to see if there was something he could use. If it wasn't, he could use the next few hours while Hashirama was passed out to get his composing in. His asshole best friend never woke up before noon (local noon, not noon back home -- you could set a clock by it) when they went out on a bender, and whenever noon was in this place, it couldn't be yet. Out the window, the sun was winking over the horizon like a golden knife through the fog of dawn.

     As he picked up his guitar, he saw the bastard sleeping, curled up in a sheet on a cushion on the floor, cuddling his new instrument like a teddy bear. How many motels on how many continents had they woken up in, just like this? His face always looked so carefree when he slept. The sight of it tried to squeeze the blood and breath out of Madara's chest every time.

     Especially when the sunlight caught it like that.

     Madara looked away. What the clueless jackass never knew couldn't hurt either of them.

     He strummed through the tabs he must've thought were brilliant last night, to have circled them like that and marked them off with three arrows -- playing as loud as he wanted, since nothing was going to wake the oaf on the floor. It was clear he'd been drunk off his head. The whole phrase was shit. But if he rearranged the end of the first bit, maybe...

     And he could work this rhythm.

     Might need to change the chord progression.

     But there could be something decent once he fixed it.

     "Can't count the days since I left you," he sang. "You won't leave me be. Oh, can't count the days since I left you. You won't leave me be. Strike my match on the corner, it's your shadow I see..."

~//~

     "No, Hashirama."

     "But you've got to sing the shoe song! I think it's my new favorite song!"

     "No fucking way."

     His former best friend had in no way helped his case by singing it at least 15 times during the twelve-hour trip back home, proving that he could remember every speck of bullshit that'd happened while they were drunk. Madara was pretty sure one of the benefits of drunkenness was not being able to remember things you ought to be embarrassed of. Hashirama didn't even have the decency to be embarrassed.

     Worse, he got the whole damn plane singing along about the inedibility of shoes.

     The asshole grabbed Madara and tried to give him a noogie. "Oh, come on!"

     "I said no," he answered, pushing his way out. "That means no. I have to go home and make a _real_ setlist, and practice it, and you're not invited!"

     "Your gig is next week, right?"

     Madara knew when Hashirama was forcing himself to sound carefree. He didn't do it well when something was actually bothering him. But Madara didn't ask what it was. If he pushed, Hashirama would say it was nothing and clam up, but if he let the man ramble, it'd come out.

     His friend turned around, walking backwards with an aching grin on his face.

     "My timing sucks! Tobirama set up some auditions for us in London, all next month, and we leave tonight. I guess... I was supposed to meet him an hour ago to pack. But that street festival was kind of a gig, right? So technically next week is your second show. Right?"

     "Are you saying you won't be there?" A second before, Madara would've said that jackass cared more about their old promises than he ever did, but the words hurt coming out.

     "It's not--"

     "Whatever. You want to make it in this business, you've got to work for it. You can't worry about me, and I don't want you to."

     "Madara..."

     "I mean it. Break a leg out there." He tried to ignore that Hashirama had stopped walking, and that the man was gripping his jacket like a lifeline. The bastard's face was too damn close. "And you're crazy if you think I'd fly to London for one night, just to see you and Tobirama play, so if this was my first concert, it's yours, too. No more promises."

     The grin on his friend's face turned real. "I'll make a note for my biographer."

     "Yeah? Tell 'em you're a pretentious asshole, too."

     "I'll do everything I can to make it to your gig, so save a seat for your number one fan."

     With Hashirama's bag hitting his shin, Madara wished he were anywhere but nose to nose with the bane of his existence, amidst tittering crowds in a public airport, imagining a chair set up by his stage with a sign saying, 'Reserved for Senju Hashirama'.

     "It's a bar," he muttered. "If you make it, you can stand."

     He shoved the asshole away, and Hashirama kept on walking backwards, beaming.

     Until he ran into something and nearly fell over.

     Madara tore his eyes off his friend's face to see a none-too-pleased Tobirama.

     "Where the hell have you been? Mom found the airline charges and--"

     "Madara's getting married!"

     "What?!" Madara and Tobirama both spat. For once, he and the younger Senju brother were on the same page.

     Hashirama trotted over, pointing at his guitar. "To his music! Madara ran away to elope with his music! What kind of best friend would I be if I didn't throw him a bachelor party?"

     Tobirama buried his face in his hands, looking for all the world like he was wishing he'd never got out of bed this morning. Madara knew the feeling. He eyed the bubbly clown whom he never should've thought better of, and wished to hell he knew why both of them kept coming back to this.

     "What the fuck, Hashirama. I mean it. _Fuck you._ " Beelining for the exit while Tobirama held his brother by the wrist, he yelled back, "I don't want you at my gig. I don't want you in my life! I'm going home. _Don't call._ "

     "Have fun being authentic!"

     He didn't look over his shoulder to see the bastard wave.


End file.
